Electronic Arts (EA) recently started laying off staff in its Montreal game studio, but said the studio isn't closing.

EA laid off an unknown number of employees from the Montreal studio, and declined to share how many workers it has there total. EA also didn't say which teams within the studio were affected.

"EA is sharpening its focus to provide games for new platforms and mobile. In some cases, this involves reducing team sizes as we evolve into a more efficient organization," EA said in a statement.

On March 30, EA CEO John Riccitiello stepped down from his position after blaming himself for missed financial targets. EA's board of directors has appointed executive Larry Probst to fill in as executive chairman until the company finds a permanent CEO. Probst was CEO of the company from 1991-2007 when Riccitiello stepped in.

Just yesterday, EA was awarded the "Worst Company in America" award by Consumer Union's The Consumerist site. EA won the most votes by a 78 percent margin, mainly because of its problems with "SimCity" last month. Servers had crashed at international launch, and gamers grew frustrated with EA's use of DRM and servers altogether.

I worked in QA for a number of years, and to be fair to EA (although they probably don't deserve it), laying off QA when you have nothing to be tested has zero effect on quality.

Even if that studio has a current project that needs testing, the 'main' QA at EA (not located at any development house), and all the other QA branches at other development houses are used; they just don't forego QA entirely.

The only QA you keep are managers and leads; regular QA personell are a dime a dozen, and easy to refill positions when needed. It is an entry level job with literally thousands of applicants.

I dislike EA, but acting like they are shooting themselves in the foot for laying off 100 QA out of their stable of 1,000 total QA is just silly.

Blactivazzard (Blizzard/Activision) needs to buy EA out and maybe...just maybe, they will make some quality games that are worth $60 to play. Hell, I would love to see Blizz's take on C&C and make it NOT like warcraft/starcraft. Better yet, revive Dune and not make it suck (eg. Dune 2000).

And maybe come out with a FPS sequel to C&C: Commando that actually improves on the game itself and not just a rehashing of the same crap with nice graphics and a similar story...like EA has done with all the Battlefield games.

You now just took notice @XIII? The series began it's craptastic fall from grace with X, but since there was a huge following of retards, who never played I-IX, claiming that it was the best thing ever, coupled with their ego that they don't make bad games ever, Squaresoft never realized FFX and onwards were crap.

**Didn't play XI. XII wasn't that bad but at the end of the day was sub-par, mediocre at best.

quote: Even saying that, quality is sliding. Compare the popularity of Diablo 3 to Diablo 2.

I agree, Diablo 2 is a favorite past time of mine, and i can say Diablo 3 is not even mediocre. It was dumbed down and simplified not only to appease to casual and new players, but to run on the PS3/4. I miss the days of good old school computer gaming.

Cliffy B, you have fallen so far from the days when you did awesome things in UT2k4. I have lost all respect for you (and watering down UT so you could try and sell more Gears crap didn't help).

Activision sucks. EA sucks more. The lesson should be clear: mega-corporation game developers are the devil. Quality goes to hell in a hurry. The only exceptions to the rule seem to be companies that are developing the same brands that they started with--and didn't sell-out/buy-out anyone. Hence why Rare sucks & Nintendo still produces A+ quality games. I honestly don't know any Diablo 2 veterans who would rather play Diablo 3 over Torchlight 2. Think about that.

"Always-on" is not acceptable. I can speak for millions of DOD members who feel the same way. It must be nice to postulate random BS in your gilded tower built on the dime of people who used to support your products. Starcraft 2 should have been a BIG wake-up call for developers. Lots of people live on the road, and an absolutely required internet connection is a no-go.

If there is some good of this, however, it is likely that it will lead better game cracks. Faux internet servers designed to fool games into thinking they have an online connection--or altogether defeating the connecting algorithms. There are only 2 solutions to game developers who irk their consumers; either the games don't get purchased, or they get hacked. To put it another way:

"The more DRM you use to tighten your grasp, the more customers are going to slip through your fingers"

While I understand that some people are mad that Diablo 3 is not just diablo 2 with better graphics, there are still many many people that were into D2 that like D3.

I am still playing almost every day to unwind after the kids go to bed. I played D2 for several years, but still prefer D3 to d2, POE and Torchlight.

While I understand that always on can be an issue for some people, it is not one of the worse cases of DRM. The isse with deployed soldiers is an issue, and one that I wish there was a fix for, but otherwise, there is no significant % of people that is truly effects. The benefits are that dupes, and hacks are nearly non-existant, and you do not need some stupid drm scheme locally that messes with installs.

Does it suck when the servers go down periodically - yes, but I just go find something else to do for awhile, it is not the end of the world.

Man, you'd think they'd at least sit on some of these actions for a while, and hope people (at least some of them) kind of forget about the Worst-Company-In-America-2-Years-Running thing. But no...EA just keeps doing it's best to p1ss off whatever loyal fans it has left...